Where is Mary?

The Shelleys only lived one Winter and Spring in Rome, then when summer came, their young son died, the second child lost that year, so they left Rome for the North with the persistent feeling that they had left Rome too late. It was not a happy site for this story, and it's not her city, but Percy loved it. It's where she buried him when he died a few years later. So that's why I came here, too. I wasn't looking for Mary here in Rome. However, I thought this sketch in the entrance to a church looked a bit like her. It's a simple PSA, really - just a nun shushing tourists in the Trinita dei Monte, finger over her lips. But the habit on her head looks like Mary's shroud, and the eyes - wide enough to haunt you - watch the world the same way Mary's would, always best observing from a corner, happily unnoticed. Something about those eyes reminded me of a particular portrait of her that's softer than most. There's no reason to see Mary Shelly in a portrait of a nun saying "shh" in a town that's just trying to teach people how to behave in churches. Still, I think there's an echo, so I'm putting Mary there, in the Trinita dei Monte, at the top of the Spanish Steps, with a sunbeam in her eye, "thou child of love and light" as Percy called her. Where that face looks, she has an ideal view down the Spanish Steps to the Keats-Shelley House.